"The Assyrian field armies aren't a problem anymore, and we've got all the cities," Kathryn Hollard pointed out.

Doreen gave her a baleful look. "The flies have conquered the flypaper, " she quoted.

Ian amplified: "King Shuriash is enjoying himself, but he's also worried about getting overextended, and rightly so. He can't keep his levies under arms past fall; they're needed in the fields, and we can't do much about that for a couple of years. If his standing army and his nobles' retainers are tied up holding down Assyria, that leaves nothing for anything else. And the whole point of this exercise was to build up Babylon as a base for supporting the Hittites against Walker, you may remember. I said sit down, Colonel Hollard."

Hollard did; he still looked rumpled and stained from his long desert trek. "Yeah, well, talking of complicating factors, at least I'm not sleeping with Raupasha," he pointed out. "Christ, Kat. First it's whatshername-"

"Sin-ina-mati."

"Sin-ina-mati, and then this."

Kathryn's tanned face flushed. "Look, Colonel Hollard, sir, it isn't an Article Seven, so what the hell business is it of anyone but me and Kash?"

Doreen's eyebrows went up further. "Kash, Kat? Kash?"

"Hell, Doreen, it'd be sort of weird if I was still calling him Lord Prince of the House of Succession, wouldn't it?"

"Getting involved with a local, and the fucking crown prince, for Chrissake-" Hollard began.

Kathryn's voice rose. "I suppose beautiful-local-princess syndrome is supposed to be limited to men, Colonel, sir?"

Hollard opened his mouth, visibly reconsidered what he had been about to say, and went on, "Look, Kat, I'm not looking for a fight, okay?" After a moment she nodded. "It's just… well, hell, his expectations are going to be different. This isn't the Island, you know. And yeah, there is a difference, in a… what's the word…"

"Patriarchal," Doreen supplied.

"… patriarchal setup like this."

"I've noticed," Kathryn Hollard said dryly. "I've already turned down an offer to be the leading light of his harem."

Doreen stifled a chuckle. "How did he take it?"

"Offered to make me queen," she said. "Lady of the Land, if you want a literal translation."

Hollard shaped a silent whistle. Ian put an elbow on his desk and dropped his face into his hand. "Oh, and won't that put the cat among the pigeons-don't you realize that involves the succession to the throne, here?"

Kathryn snorted. "I turned that down, too, of course," she said briskly. Her face softened for a moment. "Though I must admit, I hated to do it, he was trying really hard… I did come back with a counteroffer."

"What?" Ian asked.

"Well, I said that if he'd make me queen, co-ruler, and general of his armies, and guarantee the succession to any children we had, and have them educated Islander-style, and a bunch of other stuff, I'd seriously consider it. That floored him."

Ian cleared his throat. "So you're breaking it off?"

Kathryn looked up, her blue eyes narrowing. "No, I am not, Councilor." She gestured helplessly. "I really like the guy, you see. It's not just that he's gorgeous and has enough animal magnetism to power a steamboat. He's also smart, and has a sense of humor, and… and it's mutual. We've agreed to see how things turn out."

Jesus, Ian whimpered to himself. Heavily: "Major Hollard, you're a free citizen of Nantucket."

She winced at that; she was also an officer of the Republic's armed forces, and a highly placed one at that. Rights came balanced with obligations.

Ian looked out the turned-back flaps of the tent, past the sentries and the ordered buff-colored tent town of the Marine camp. The Emancipator was circling over the city of Asshur, looking fairly large even at this distance. As he watched, a string of black dots tumbled away beneath it and the dirigible bounced upward as the weight left it. The bombs fell on their long, arching trajectories, and columns of black gouted upward. He could smell the smoke of burning from here; the gunboats on the Tigris were keeping the defenders limited to what water they could draw from wells and cisterns inside the battered walls, leaving little for fighting the blazes.

"King Shuriash has a whole bunch of delegations from the principal cities and tribes and whatnot of Assyria here under safe conduct," he said, changing the subject slightly. "We're running a bluff. If we can convince them that they have to give up, they will… and that'll get us out of a very deep hole. If anyone can pull it off here, Shuriash can."

"If," Doreen said. "The Assyrians are pigs, but they're stubborn, too."

"Speak of the devil," Hollard said, as trumpets sounded from the direction of the camp gate.

"Oh, he's not a bad sort… of cunning old devil," Doreen said. "I'm going to go interview our Flower of the Desert, okay?"

"Bless you, Doreen," Ian said. "Get me as complete a report as you can, soonest."

The huge-voiced herald began bellowing Shagarakti-Shuriash's titles as the chariots approached. The king sprang to the ground, waved a fly whisk in answer to the sentries' present-arms, and came grinning into the main chamber in a blaze of embroidery, civet-cat musk, and glittering gold applique. Prince Kashtiliash followed him, looking as subdued as his eagle features were capable of, and a trail of generals, priests, and officials followed. A brace of Assyrians came after them, richly dressed in long gowns and tasseled wraparound upper garments, but with rope halters around their necks in symbol of submission.

The Islander officers rose and saluted smartly; Ian came to his feet and bowed.

"Marduk and Ninurta and the great gods my masters have blessed our arms," Shuriash said, grinning like a wolf. "The great men of Asshur-the turtanu, the rab shaqe, the nagir ekalli, even the sukallu dannu-have come to see that the gods have given victory to the men of Kar-Duniash."

Commander in chief, chief cupbearer, palace herald, and great chancellor, Ian thought, impressed behind an impassive face.

"I have brought them here that you, our ally, may take their surrender as well-"

"Your pardon, O King," Ian said. "Your city of Asshur is getting damaged unnecessarily, then." He ducked through to the communications room. "Call off the bombing!"

"Strange," Raupasha said.

She put the cup of date wine before Doreen before she went to stand in the doorway of her tent and look down on the smoldering city of Asshur. The Mitannian's eyes were red, as if she had wept privately, but she kept an iron calm before the stranger.

"What is strange?" Doreen replied slowly; they were speaking Akkadian-not the native language of either-and having a little mutual trouble with each other's accents.

"That all my life I have dreamed of seeing Asshur laid waste… and now that I see it, it brings me less joy than I had awaited."

Growing up, Doreen thought.

From what she'd been able to gather, Raupasha had been raised in a little out-of-the-way hamlet, on tales of vanished glory from her foster parents. Well educated, by local standards; she could read and write in the cuneiform system, and spoke four languages-her native Hurrian, Akkadian, Hittite, Ugaritic-and a bit of what seemed to be a very archaic form of Sanskrit. Ian's scholarly ears had pricked up at that. He was working on a history of the Indo-European languages in his spare time. He would be working even harder on it if there were some way of publishing in the vanished world uptime. Not many people on the Island were interested.

"Of course, I never dreamed that wizard-folk from beyond the world would bring Asshur to its knees," Raupasha said. "I am forever grateful to you People of the Eagle, and to the hero-warrior Kenneth-Hollard- until I saw his face, I expected to die for killing the Assyrian pig. I was willing, yes; I had made my peace with it. But it is hard to die and know that your family's blood dies with you."